Conference report Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications 2017

I blagged my way into the rather good #URLLC2017 today. Here’s a quick synopsis of what’s going on, and my take on it, together with notes on each talk.

The telecoms industry is trying to progress beyond its two previous “smash hit” services: voice, and broadband Internet access. The two new key opportunities can roughly be characterised as “massive” (huge numbers of machine end points with sensors) and “critical” (low latency for interactive control). A third branch, “tactile”, for things like VR/AR, extends the current voice/broadband models.

The traditional way of working has been “horizontal”, with the same product being offered on the same basis to all users everywhere. These new URLLC opportunities are mostly centred on “verticals”, like automotive and healthcare, which means a total restructuring of the network and service offer.

The vertical ecosystem is different, the revenue model different, and the service SLAs to meet are different. 5G is seen as the primary technical means to deliver this new and valuable commercial end. The problem is that this raises a tectonic tension between different paradigms: “you get what you get” (historic supply-centric) and “you get what you need” (future demand-centric).

Telecoms executives have become used to delivering supply-centric products with either absolutely fixed timing and latency (at huge cost), or with variable timing and latency (at low cost). When it comes to these vertical uses, those models could be seen as “fit for everything” (if you can afford it) and “fit for nothing” (as the performance isn’t there and the risk too high).

The difficulty is now to get the best of both worlds: the benefits of resource sharing (packets, slices, virtual network functions, etc.) whilst also offering sufficiently predictable quality and performance, and simultaneously meeting tough-to-deliver new needs for security and automated operation. Easy, no?

At present, the 5G ambition seems to significantly exceed the ability of the industry to deliver. The people in the room are all individually competent and capable, but the systemic issues are presently “too big to succeed”. The whole industry lacks units for supply and demand, a common language for vertical requirements, and also needs to rebuild its fundamental protocols.

There is the potential for a “perfect storm”: the failure of performance integration, the tightening up of penalties for SLA breach, the arrival of new infrastructure competition (Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba), troubles of public safety systems on LTE, new high altitude and low-orbit satellite, and more.

There’s also a sense that the industrial sector, used to precision engineering, finds our performance engineering somewhat lacking in rigour. If the current telecoms industry won’t supply their needs, they may end up bypassing us and building a new industry on new science and architecture foundations. It’s already happened in some areas, like IoT.

This opens up the possibility for cloud players or industry specialists to disrupt the present mobile operator model. The defence of licensed spectrum may not be sufficient to prevent supply-side substitution, as regulators will listen to the needs of the demand side, as it employs more people and has more money.

The opportunity is very large – bigger than the original 1990s consumer mobility boom in many ways – so there’s plenty of scope for all to do well. Whilst telcos and their suppliers need to “up their game” to close the gap between demand and supply, it is achievable. The main change is attitude, not technology.

My sense is that the wild marketing claims and sexy use cases need to be toned down a bit. The real work is in defining reliability and low latency, creating interoperable SLA standards, calibrating scientific testbeds, and designing new business processes like automated fault isolation.

Not very glamorous, I know. But then again, 5G is the digital experience trucking industry, where the packets have no rest stops.

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I am an expert on the telecommunications business. I help senior executives to make sense of what is happening, anticipate what is coming, and to act decisively in the face of uncertainty. My long-term professional goal is to facilitate three paradigm shifts: for data networking to become a true science; for voice to evolve its own native form of hypermedia; and for cloud-based enterprises to have the most efficient and effective possible means to communicate with their customers - Martin Geddes. Contact us here